Homily for Ash Wednesday

Homily for Ash Wednesday

Feb. 14, 2024
Collect
Sophomores, Salesian HS, New Rochelle

If you’ve been paying the least bit of attention to the news, you know that there are campaigns going on.  There are military campaigns in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.  We have a presidential campaign in our country.

Fr. Bruce Craig gives ashes to a boy
at the Salesian Oratory on Paris St., East Boston

The collect (or opening prayer) today speaks of a different kind of campaign, a “campaign of Christian service.”  We are, the collect says, engaged in a “battle against spiritual evils.”  You’re all aware of evils around us—not in foreign countries, but in our neighborhoods.  A guy was shot dead on a subway platform in the Bronx on Monday, and other people were wounded.  A woman brought a rifle into a church service in Houston on Sunday and opened fire.  You know how available drugs are, and how much shoplifting goes on.  You know a lot of people are hungry, a lot are homeless, and a lot are fleeing violence in their homelands.

Those are physical and social evils—real, dangerous, and harmful to society.  But we’re at war with spiritual evil, the evil that is dangerous to our souls and therefore not to our physical life but to our eternal life.  That evil is sin.  During Lent we renew our war against sin in our lives:  we take up “weapons of self-restraint,” the prayer says.  That is, we renew our commitment to restrain ourselves from sins like lying, theft, impurity, cheating, disrespect for our parents, meanness toward our brothers and sisters, laziness about our schoolwork, etc.

Sin is so tempting!  And not just to teenagers!  But Jesus loves us and is ready to forgive us and to give us a fresh start in our “campaign of Christian service.”  We’re in service to Christ, sort of like military service.  In the ancient world, soldiers and slaves—men and women who were bound to service to Caesar or to some owner—were branded to indicate who owned them.  You probably know that on Western cattle ranges, steers and cows were branded to identify who owned them.  When you were baptized, you were branded too; your soul received a spiritual seal that marks you as belonging to Christ, as his servant, as someone who wants to follow him.

Today you’re going to be sealed or branded again.  You’re going to be signed with ashes—usually with a sign of the cross—which marks you as a repentant sinner and a man who commits himself to Jesus.  You want to take up his “battle against spiritual evils,” against your personal temptations and sins.  St. Paul urges us, “Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20).  Jesus loves us; he is “gracious and merciful, rich in kindness,” as the prophet Joel says (2:13).  Jesus welcomes us and promises us, “This is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2).